National Inventory Pub Crawling: Hull and Bradford

As Gloucester had a fixture at Leeds to start the 2007/8 rugby season, we took the opportunity to visit some friends and visit a few pubs in East, South and West Yorkshire.

As some of Andrew’s friends had recently moved to Hull, we decided to call in for the weekend after a quick visit to Sheffield. Alas, the traffic problems on the M1 meant that we were running well over an hour late, so a logical plan B was a stop-off in the pit village of Barnburgh, and the unlisted Coach and Horses. This pub is worth a visit for its glazed counter screens with a lovely wheatsheaf design. We paid £3.20 here for a pint and a half of Barnburgh Bitter (4%), which was in superb condition, bright and clear, although not to my taste. The pub is much bigger than it looks from the outside: three main rooms and a large lobby, with a wooden bar back that extends around the corner from the public bar right through the rest of the pub. We enquired whether the screens to the pool room were serviceable as hatches; the bar man told us they were never used as such, but on investigation he found that they do indeed still work. The walls are adorned with photographs of the locals enjoying the village festivals (all tinged with sadness though as the absence of any old men shows the true cost of mining).

Saturday afternoon saw us start a modest pub crawl around Hull with our friends at the Minerva, a riverside pub which is not in the National Inventory but had been recommended to us several times as being a good pub for real ale. This proved to be the case in some respects; alas the on-site micro brewery had folded a few years ago. Four beers were available (out of five handpumps), and I opted to try Caledonian Tried and Tested. (The round cost £9.80 in total for four and a half pints.) The T&T could not be faulted for its quality, and the pub is rightly in the GBG, but the measures were woefully short, and the requested top-up, although given with good grace, still did not give a full pint. Other than that, though, our visit was a pleasant one, and as the pub offers great views over the Humber, we decided to sit outside, after a quick look round the pub, to enjoy the autumn sunshine. The pub itself isn’t that special from an architectural point of view, but we liked its very small triangular snug and the sheer amount of nautical memorabilia that cover the walls of all 5 rooms.

Hull has an interesting set of walkways, and so we followed the ‘metal fish’ north alongside the old river towards our next stop, Durty Nelly’s (no, that isn’t a typo!), which you’ll be truly staggered to learn is an Irish pub; again, it’s not in the NI, but we’d been encouraged to go there and try the beer. Sadly the pub’s own beer, Durty Nelly’s Bitter, was off, but the Black Sheep bitter was fine, and a top-up was given with good grace. The pub is sparse and spacious, being set up for live entertainment, although there’s a table made from an old hospital bed! One wall has a huge Connect 4 game, and the largely bare, unrendered walls have presumably been painted with ‘old tobacco stain’, just a few scattered cartoons and old photos breaking things up. Although this look is obviously contrived, the pub looks more authentic than most Irish pubs I’ve visited.

From there we moved on to our first National Inventory pub of the day, Ye Olde Black Boy. The pub is listed Grade II and has the most fantastic window in the front (smoke) room, with what I guess are the original hand-blown glass panes. The back bar is less spectacular, but displays a fair collection of bottled beers. The front room has a small hatch to the bar, but the busy part of the pub is the back room, where we found Wychwood Hobgoblin, Roosters Yankee, Hopback Summer Lightning, Tetley Bitter and Caledonian Deuchars IPA available plus one (temporarily) unused handpump. Four and a half pints cost £11.80 here, the Hobgoblin and Roosters being the best pints of the day.

Ye Olde Blue Bell Hotel takes some finding, being located down an alleyway to nowhere (or so it’ll seem) off ‘Market Place’. This isn’t in the National Inventory but looks like it should be. It’s a Sam Smiths pub, so we weren’t surprised to be charged just £3.44 for five halves. The bitter, alas, was very ordinary, so we tried both the keg stout and mild as well, just to be polite whilst looking round. The pub is not spectacular, but quite engaging, with chatty locals; an unusual layout based around a long, central bar which is gloriously old-fashioned; the several drinking rooms offering different levels of comfort. There is an upstairs pool room which was once a busy folk club, started years ago by the Watersons. Sadly the original stage area was walled up by an anti-folk-music landlord; it’s a great shame as the acoustic in the room is just incredible (I tried it).

Back to the National Inventory for our next pub, another ‘ye olde’ - this time Ye Olde White Harte, up another alleyway. This pub is very old, dating in part from the 17th century. A skull kept in state behind the left hand bar is said to be of the pub ghost, Frieda – the skull was found when work was being done on the pub and was then given the name, but no-one knows who Frieda really was. By all accounts she is still active anyway! This pub looks very gloomy at first, with worn wooden fittings and panels almost everywhere, including the ceiling, but it’s cleverly lit and not as dark as it seems. There are some lovely pieces of stained glass as well. Their beer was unimpressive; rather ordinary pints of Caledonian 80/- and Deuchars IPA were sampled, although their food has a good reputation.

We made a detour for some food at this point, and the group unanimously gave the Yinjibar Chinese ten out of ten – but I won’t recommend Chinese beer to you.

Having overdone the food, we decided that the final pub of the evening would be the Wellington, the local CAMRA pub of the year; not a National Inventory pub, just highly thought of by every local we’d met that day. This pub boasts a special glass-sided room to display their large collection of continental beers; which was a shame, as we were all struggling to finish our first drinks. My Simpson & Simpson Captain Oates Mild was in great condition; rather strong at 4.5% (£2.20), but with great flavour and very well kept. Andrew stuck to Woodforde’s Wherry as it was a new barrel. My last beer of the evening was a draft St Louis Kriek as I felt the need of something fruity and slightly fizzy to settle my stomach. This is a pub that I’d definitely like to go back to when I’m feeling a bit better.

On Sunday morning, with equilibriums somewhat restored, we headed west on the M62 to Bradford, negotiating the city centre to find the New Beehive. We were incredibly lucky here; as the pub is normally closed on Sunday lunchtimes, but the landlord, who happened to be outside watering some shrubs in his car park when we arrived, very kindly let us in when we said we’d driven up from Gloucestershire to visit the pub. He generously offered to serve us a beer as well as letting us wander round for as long as we wanted, eventually giving us a guided tour. We both tried the Ossett Silver King (4.3%) at £2.30 a pint, and it was in tip-top condition; there were another two beers from Yorkshire breweries on handpump. The New Beehive is a deceptively large pub with four drinking rooms, an entrance lobby, a music venue in the cellar, upstairs club/function room and 15 bedrooms plus living area! The ground floor has gas lighting throughout. The comfy front bar has built-in upholstered seating around the edges, matching chairs, and, for some bizarre reason, a stuffed kingfisher. The pool room has built-in leather upholstered benches, a large array of pump clips (they must love Archers) and old advertisements. The lobby area has a servery through to the bar, wooden panels to head height and a tiled corridor. The bar itself is big, with more wooden paneling and some stained glass. The large lounge has life-size murals on the walls depicting well-known musicians. And then, as we were admiring the tranquil lounge, he invited us down to see the cellar bar; a vast room covering almost the whole footprint of the building, with its own serving area, piano, several styles of seating, staging area and flagstone floor, the tables groaning with the remains of what appeared to have been a very good party the night before (which hadn’t finished until 6am!).

We were sorry to leave the Beehive, but time was getting on and we didn’t want to leave Bradford without a visit to the Grade II listed Cock and Bottle, their local CAMRA pub of the year. Travel news! Avoid the northern part of the town centre for a few years until they finish rebuilding it! We had been warned of a rough clientele at this pub, but we received a very warm welcome; the only signs of roughness that I saw (apart from a serious outbreak of body piercing) were some slight damage to the glass on one of the doors, and the state of the ladies’ toilets (one with no seat, one with no lock!). There were five beers on handpump here, and we tried three of them between us: Kelham Gold (3.8%), Daleside Blonde (3.9%) and Abbeydale Moonshine (4.3%), all at £2.00 per pint. All three were in very good condition, and Andrew particularly enjoyed the Daleside Blonde, which was the Yorkshire Champion Beer in 2007. The main bar here has a bar back with impressive etched glass in various shades of gold, with an internal glass panel going through to the next room. A small lounge has built-in upholstered benches around the side, and a very impressive (but we suspect modern) stained glass window depicting the name of the pub; this room also had old maps of Bradford from 1889/90, revised in 1905/6 and showing the tram lines, together with another from 1800 displayed on the wall. The second bar area was closed from the outside, but we were allowed to slip through the central servery to look at it; the glasswork separating the two bar areas and on the outside windows is fantastic, and there is a small area in the corner which looks as though it might once have been an off-sales or ladies’ area (now part of the main room). At the far end of the pub there is a large function room, with benches around the outside, displaying pictures and framed shirts of the local teams on the wall. Another small lounge off the corridor leading to this has more upholstered benches including a one-man seat tucked just round the corner behind the door. We got chatting to a couple of friendly locals in here, and read the history of the pub (displayed on the wall): the pub was first recorded in 1643, and the manageress of 1901 came from Stowmarket!

We managed eventually to tear ourselves away from our new friends in the Cock and Bottle, and got to Leeds with just enough time for one more pub before the rugby: the Beech, an unlisted National Inventory pub. The Beech is a basic pub, purpose-built in 1931 and remaining substantially intact, with three rooms and a lobby by the side entrance. It only serves the one ale, Tetley Bitter, which was clear and in reasonably good condition, but is just so insipid after tasting anything decent. The pint plus a coke came to £3.25. An interesting feature here is the glass window panel which allows a view from the bar right through the entire pub, through the lounge bar to the pool room. The lounge bar has copper-topped sewing machine tables, whilst the pool room has upholstered leather benches around the outside, with the pub piano sat on its own little stage in a corner. The whole place is very reminiscent of a working men’s club – there is even a sign in the corridor saying “no working clothes”.

All in all, a good trip, most of the pubs mentioned being worthy of a second visit.

Sophie (with assistance from Andrew Frape)

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